 To raise students' aspirations for their own futures, Whangarei Boys High School arranged trips and meetings with tertiary institutions to give students a better idea of what options are available after they complete their high school education. The idea here is to lift the boys' aspirations by showing them what is out there, what is possible, and that they could be part of it. Many of our boys don't have an idea of what's out there and that they could be part of that. If you don't know it's there, you can't aspire to it. The response to this programme by the boys and the parents has been absolutely amazing. Parents saying things like, I've got a different boy back. He's talking about his future. He's inspired. He wants to do well. He can see where he's going, which is really heartening to see that that work is there. Three years ago, this trip was a vanload of boys. Then we managed to fill a bus the next year. Last year we had a bus with a waiting list. This year we took a bus with extra vehicles. So we aspire next year to take all Māori boys in the year 10. I only knew what I was going to do last year. So when I took Year 12 tourism and QRC came up to talk to us, so Queen's Town Resort College, I took an interest as soon as they started talking to us about their tourism courses, their hospitality courses and their culinary courses. I knew that I wanted to go down there after school. In regards to their future education, what I've really, really been impressed by is the university visits, tertiary visits. And it's a two-day event and they go down and they go to the different universities and they get to see other Māori students while they're there. Like, oh, this is possible for me. Before, you might come from a family or university or just, you know, been able to get different types of careers. It doesn't have to be university, but just moving forward in your education to get a really good job. Now it's like, oh, this is a possibility for me. They can do it, you know, I can do it. And before if those families don't have that conversation, then where are they going to get it from? And that kofika station is coming from the school. I'm taking medie studies at the Whangarei Girls High School. And it's really been really good because even though we didn't have the option there, our new principal was able to find a way for us to still take the subject. I intend to study a Bachelor of Arts at AUT majoring in film and TV. And so that's what's been really cool about taking medie studies over at Girls High is that it's given me a doorway to go into that subject and when I go to study, I'll know what to expect kind of thing like that. So that's really good and that's what's cool to see that the school, even though it doesn't have the subject, is still encouraging us to take the subjects that the school doesn't really offer. So that's what's really cool about it and I'm really happy about that. Because of how old school our school was, we never really had the opportunity to have food technology or anything to do with culinary arts or anything. So when I told one of our careers' guidance customers that I wanted to be a chef, she gave me the opportunity to be a part of a course at North Tech in Rau Manga. It's encouraging because there's a lot of... Nowadays, there's a lot of young male Māori dropping out of school or missing out of school in different places in New Zealand and there's kind of an increase of Māori men. Not exactly finishing school or doing stuff that isn't the greatest and there's an increase in the Māori crime rate and stuff like that. So it's good to see that she's focusing on education and making sure that we don't fall to the statistics and making sure that Māori students do finish school and make sure they go off to university or go into a trade or in the Navy or the Army or anything like that. And to get an education and it's really encouraging to see that because she's making sure that we do have a future and that we are a school that promotes Māori males going into an education.